Re: [SC-L] Unclassified NSA document on .NET 2.0 Framework Security
There is a lot of USA firm coding done outside our shores. Thus the attitude you are reporting impacts the software I am buying both for my desktop as well as the upcoming cloud applications. This is the part that concerns me. As a consumer of code when it's in my possession I am then able to do what I can to augment the security of it. When it's in the cloud, I'm depending on the vendor of the cloud to have thought about security . We need to get to the place where you can come back in a few years and say that the culture has changed. IMHO don't apologize. It shows that we still need to get consumers/buyers of code to care that Developers are taught to care. We have work to do. Stephen Craig Evans wrote: Hi Gunnar, I apologize to everybody if I have come across as being harsh. From my 8 years of experience of living in Asia and being actively involved as a developer and working with developers (at Microsoft as its first .NET Regional Developer Evangelist in 2001 to recently at Symantec as the first Secure Application Services consultant for APAC), IMO there's a big gap between the maturity of software security here vs. Europe vs. West Coast USA vs. East Coast USA. The culture is different and even in the situation that a software developer cared and wanted to implement software security, in many countries they could get in a lot of trouble for upstaging their boss and making him or her lose face. The responsibility of secure software is not at the developer level in most cases, which is why I've spoken at regional IASA events (www.iasahome.org), with overwhelming positive responses, and will continue to try to reach the decision makers (as an OWASP representative) because trying to engage developers directly at this point in time at the maturity level of software security in APAC is not the most effective way to go about it. I'm sure, though, that at financial institutions they get it, but almost all of my clients are government and media/communications companies. Also, sorry to everybody for taking this thread off-topic. Stephen On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 2:24 AM, Gunnar Peterson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: stephen i spend at least half my time working directly with developers. for some reason i have not communicated as well as i should to you, what i am saying is that the job is too hard for developers *because* the security industry has let them down by sending them on a fool's errand of least privilege. the problem or target in your words IS with security people NOT developers. they have other problems just not an endless quixotic quest for least privilege. i am not repeat not throwing developers under the bus in this argument. i am ready, willing and possibly able to be proven wrong on this point and maybe there is a cost effective way to deploy least privilege in the real world just want to make sure that i communicate my argument. -gunnar (who is now letting go) On Nov 25, 2008, at 12:07 PM, Stephen Craig Evans wrote: I can't let this go. Gary, you are self-professed working with financial institutions and high-end customers. Gunnar, you are the same, at least what I gather from your Silver Bullet podcast when talking about the difference between SOA (top down) and Web 2.0 (bottom up). No flame war intended, but a healthy discussion should be in order. So please don't talk about developers as targets. They/we are the lowest on the totem pole. Direct your arrows at the people that you deal with. Plain and simple. Cheers, Stephen On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 1:48 AM, Gunnar Peterson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: look, i am a consultant. i work in lots of different companies. lots of different projects. i don't see these distinctions in black and white. sometimes the cto and managers are best positioned to help companies develop more secure software, sometimes architects, sometimes auditors, and many many times in my experience developers are best positioned. but i really, truly do not care who does it. my only goal is more effective security mechanisms and some pragmatic roadmap to get there. we are in the infancy of this industry (think automotive safety circa 1942, all seat belts and brakes), we are in no position to turn away help from anyone who can help. every company and every project is different, if your organization is set up so that developers are not empowered, but managers and CTOs are then by all means work with them. but actually the main point of my post and the one i would like to hear people's thoughts on - is to say that attempting to apply principle of least privilege in the real world often leads to drilling dry wells. i am not blaming any group in particular i am saying i think it is in the too hard pile for now and we as software security people should not be advocating for it until or unless we can find cost effective ways to implement it. -gunnar On Nov
Re: [SC-L] Software Assist to Find Least Privilege
Aaron Margosis' Non-Admin WebLog : LUA Buglight 2.0, second preview: http://blogs.msdn.com/aaron_margosis/archive/2008/11/06/lua-buglight-2-0-second-preview.aspx Mark Rockman wrote: It be difficult to determine /a priori/ the settings for all the access control lists and other security parameters that one must establish for CAS to work. Perhaps a software assist would work according to the following scenario. Run the program in the environment in which it will actually be used. Assume minimal permissions. Each time the program would fail due to violation of some permission, notate the event and plow on. Assuming this is repeated for every use case, the resulting reports would be a very good guide to how CAS settings should be established for production. Of course, everytime the program is changed in any way, the process would have to be repeated. MARK ROCKMAN MDRSESCO LLC ___ Secure Coding mailing list (SC-L) SC-L@securecoding.org List information, subscriptions, etc - http://krvw.com/mailman/listinfo/sc-l List charter available at - http://www.securecoding.org/list/charter.php SC-L is hosted and moderated by KRvW Associates, LLC (http://www.KRvW.com) as a free, non-commercial service to the software security community. ___ ___ Secure Coding mailing list (SC-L) SC-L@securecoding.org List information, subscriptions, etc - http://krvw.com/mailman/listinfo/sc-l List charter available at - http://www.securecoding.org/list/charter.php SC-L is hosted and moderated by KRvW Associates, LLC (http://www.KRvW.com) as a free, non-commercial service to the software security community. ___
Re: [SC-L] Unclassified NSA document on .NET 2.0 Framework Security
Why shouldn't they be asked to think about it? Especially now. I do. I install Vista and find out how many of my apps don't like it. Go grab a copy of Luabuglight and watch Aaron Margosis' stuff. Why should I as an Admin have to care about this stuff after Developers that don't care about it code software? Okay yeah so the management has to have the religion of it but if developers at their core do not care then IMHO I as a consumer of code need to ensure that they do. You can't add it on afterwards, so if the developers doing the coding do not care because ultimately management does not, we still have a fundamental problem in the software industry. Dana Epp's ramblings at the Sanctuary: Introduction to Microsoft's SDL Threat Modeling Tool: http://silverstr.ufies.org/blog/archives/001060.html He's a developer and he cares. And he definitely cares about least priv and ensure that his code doesn't ask anything that it shouldn't. Stephen Craig Evans wrote: It's a real cop-out for you guys, as titans in the industry, to go after developers. I'm disappointed in both of you. And Gary, you said One of the main challenges is that developers have a hard time thinking about the principle of least privilege . Developers are NEVER asked to think about the principle of least privilege. Or your world of software security must be very very very different from mine (and I think my world at least equals yours but by about 2 billion people more, which might be irrelevant now but a little more relevant in the future :-) With the greatest, deepest respect to both of you, Stephen On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 1:01 AM, Stephen Craig Evans [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Gunnar, Developers have no power. You should be talking to the decision makers. As an example, to instill the importance of software security, I talk to decision makers: project managers, architects, CTOs (admittedly, this is a blurred line - lots of folks call themselves architects). If I go to talk about software security to developers, I know from experience that I am probably wasting my time. Even if they do care, they have no effect overall. Your target and blame is wrong; that's all that I am saying. Stephen On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 12:48 AM, Gunnar Peterson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Sorry I didn't realize developers is an offensive ivory tower in other parts of the world, in my world its a compliment. -gunnar On Nov 25, 2008, at 10:30 AM, Stephen Craig Evans wrote: HI, maybe the problem with least privilege is that it requires that developers:... IMHO, your US/UK ivory towers don't exist in other parts of the world. Developers have no say in what they do. Nor, do they care about software security and why should they care? So, at least, change your nomenclature and not say developers. It offends me because you are putting the onus of knowing about software security on the wrong people. Cheers, Stephen On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 10:18 PM, Gunnar Peterson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: maybe the problem with least privilege is that it requires that developers: 1. define the entire universe of subjects and objects 2. define all possible access rights 3. define all possible relationships 4. apply all settings 5. figure out how to keep 1-4 in synch all the time do all of this before you start writing code and oh and there are basically no tools that smooth the adoption of the above. i don't think us software security people are helping anybody out in 2008 by doing ritual incantations of a paper from the mid 70s that may or may not apply to modern computing and anyhow is riddled with ideas that have never been implemented in any large scale systems compare these two statements Statement 1. Saltzer and Schroeder: f) Least privilege: Every program and every user of the system should operate using the least set of privileges necessary to complete the job. Primarily, this principle limits the damage that can result from an accident or error. It also reduces the number of potential interactions among privileged programs to the minimum for correct operation, so that unintentional, unwanted, or improper uses of privilege are less likely to occur. Thus, if a question arises related to misuse of a privilege, the number of programs that must be audited is minimized. Put another way, if a mechanism can provide firewalls, the principle of least privilege provides a rationale for where to install the firewalls. The military security rule of need-to-know is an example of this principle. Statement 2. David Gelernter's Manifesto: 28. Metaphors have a profound effect on computing: the file-cabinet metaphor traps us in a passive instead of active view of information management that is fundamentally wrong for computers. 29. The rigid file and directory system you are stuck with on your Mac or PC was designed by programmers for programmers — and is still a
Re: [SC-L] Microsoft's message at RSA
http://media.omediaweb.com/rsa2008/mediaplayerVO.htm?speaker=1_4 And if you want to listen to it, there it is as well. Gunnar Peterson wrote: Hi Gary, I think they are doing it, Cardspace is the key enabling technology to making it happen. Given how many enterprises are federation-enabled (and how simply the rest can be), the biggest missing piece right now is that we need an Identity Provider for the Internets. Of course this only helps to solve the access control problem, not the defensive programming problem, you can still shoot yourself in the foot with SAML and WS-* (Brian Chess and I gave a talk on this at RSA). But at least it will be nice to have the banks and brokerage houses stop having people type their username and passwords into web browsers, and then blaming the consumer when things go amiss. -gp Gary McGraw wrote: hi sc-l, Here's an article about Mundie's keynote at RSA. It's worth a read from a software security perspective. Somehow I ended up playing the foil in this article...go figure. http://reddevnews.com/features/article.aspx?editorialsid=2470 So what do you guys think? Is this end-to-end trusted computing stuff going to fly with developers? gem company www.cigital.com podcast www.cigital.com/silverbullet blog www.cigital.com/justiceleague book www.swsec.com ___ Secure Coding mailing list (SC-L) SC-L@securecoding.org List information, subscriptions, etc - http://krvw.com/mailman/listinfo/sc-l List charter available at - http://www.securecoding.org/list/charter.php SC-L is hosted and moderated by KRvW Associates, LLC (http://www.KRvW.com) as a free, non-commercial service to the software security community. ___ ___ Secure Coding mailing list (SC-L) SC-L@securecoding.org List information, subscriptions, etc - http://krvw.com/mailman/listinfo/sc-l List charter available at - http://www.securecoding.org/list/charter.php SC-L is hosted and moderated by KRvW Associates, LLC (http://www.KRvW.com) as a free, non-commercial service to the software security community. ___ ___ Secure Coding mailing list (SC-L) SC-L@securecoding.org List information, subscriptions, etc - http://krvw.com/mailman/listinfo/sc-l List charter available at - http://www.securecoding.org/list/charter.php SC-L is hosted and moderated by KRvW Associates, LLC (http://www.KRvW.com) as a free, non-commercial service to the software security community. ___
Re: [SC-L] Software security != security software
The problem is that security software vendors including Symantec and McAfee have used the very same techniques for years in the name of good. Antivirus software and personal firewall software pulls all sorts of fancy kernel-interpositioning kung fu. . and for every good. there is also a bad: http://www.securiteam.com/windowsntfocus/6Z0032AH5U.html The reason we need security software like antivirus tools and personal firewalls is that OSes have traditionally suffered from all kinds of security problems (both bugs and flaws). Hmmm let's see lately we've had these bugs http://secunia.com/vendor/6/ and these http://secunia.com/vendor/70/ and these http://secunia.com/vendor/56/ and these ones http://secunia.com/vendor/54/ and these http://secunia.com/vendor/51/ and. well you get the idea that it's not just OS's that have security flaws.. sometimes it's the very things we buy to make us secure that have their own issues Microsoft may be too responsible to manipulate its security defect density intentionally in order to create demand for its security software, but the fact that this is even possible is a great worry. This is like allowing the fox to design and build the henhouse, not just guard it. Microsoft rogue developer says in development meeting of Forefront products: Say... I think I'm going to manipulate security defects just 'cause I want to drive more sales of Forefront products...yeah that's the ticket... Okay so with tinfoil in place... that's going to need a Security defect Density Product Manager (Microsoft doesn't do anything without a PM or two you know), at least an entire WagEd (Waggoner Edstrom [however you spell that] marketing division to do a 'spin' and marketing blitz on how Forefront needs to be the software of choice... numerous conference calls and committee meetings, not to mention a User Interface testing ... etc etc... You know this reminds me of when my Dad would respond to the folks that said that the Government did fill in the blank such as kill Kennedy, pretend to go to the moon but really did not, and other assorted odds and ends. 1. From the outside it appears that they are not that well organized to pull something like this off (it took them 5 years to get Vista out the door... do you honestly think that Microsoft can selectively code a security defect density without causing some other issue? That the Forefront team gets together with the Vista team and the watercooler and swaps and coordinates places to put defects in? 2. Do you honestly think there wouldn't be some honest whistle blower somewhere that wouldn't be on the Fox News Channel or Oprah in a heartbeat? Is this possible? When our own government put forth evidence of weapons of mass destruction and later it comes out there wasn't any...that showcases that people talk and the truth gets out. Maybe I just grew up too much in the era of Watergate and believe too strongly in the power of free speech... but it's a little hard for me to think that someone like MiniMicrosoft wouldn't be screaming their head off if someone in Microsoft even thought of such a thing. Someone would blog. Trust me on that one. Quite frankly, I've been burned a few times with those antivirus companies that have guarded my henhouse and have flagged things as viruses they shouldn't, and have brought my network to it's knees. So even when they were protecting me, I've lost confidence in them too. Right now my biggest concern is that we still aren't caring enough about software security at all. Susan... who's convinced that the bad guys have gotten over these petty turf wars a long time ago and are way more cooperating/coordinating that the good guys are. Gary McGraw wrote: Hi all, The furvor over Microsoft's entry into the security software business is confusing some people about their software security designs. Or maybe people who know better are trying to confuse the market??! Note word order. I wrote about this in my latest darkreading column that you can find here: http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=112402 gem company www.cigital.com podcast www.cigital.com/silverbullet book www.swsec.com This electronic message transmission contains information that may be confidential or privileged. The information contained herein is intended solely for the recipient and use by any other party is not authorized. If you are not the intended recipient (or otherwise authorized to receive this message by the intended recipient), any disclosure, copying, distribution or use of the contents of the information is prohibited. If you have received this electronic message transmission in error, please contact the sender by reply email and delete all copies of this message. Cigital, Inc. accepts no responsibility for any loss or damage resulting directly or
